Fiction | Page 38 | The Common

Freefall in a Shattered Mirror

November 1, 2013 Fiction, Issue 06, Issue 06 Fiction, Translation

Lying suspended over a lake. She can see her entire self on the surface of the water. Every now and then circles appear and expand, distorting the image. At times she looks at her reflection with sadness, at times she chokes with bitterness and tries to escape, to turn over or stand in the air. But it’s no use, she is totally fixed—as if fastened with unseen ropes.

Thick fog passes underneath. When it shrouds the view below, she feels euphoric, she feels herself turn inside out, revealing attractive short hair and two ears with seven rings in each, revealing her perfectly feminine form. She is fragrant with the scent of lemon.

Meetings

November 1, 2013 Fiction, Issue 06, Issue 06 Fiction

By HELEN HOOPER

Kirsten entered this particular Starbucks right after her interview at The Wilderness Foundation across the street. It had not gone well. She’d exited into the midmorning glare and crossed the street in the direction the traffic light permitted—she had to go one way or another—and continued through the glass revolving door to the counter, where she ordered a grande hot chocolate, yes on the whipped cream. Set down her bag, claimed a table. Two mothers worked their strollers around the table to her left like lawnmowers around a mailbox. A man dialing his cell phone took the table to her right.

Mischief

November 1, 2013 Fiction, Issue 06, Issue 06 Fiction

By MEGAN STAFFEL

The call came in February. Chipper Hanson had found a lost goat and tied it to his porch, where it was kicking and butting and destroying things. He called the hardware, and the hardware called me, because if nobody got it off his porch soon, his wife was going to get the gun and take care of the problem herself, and whether that would involve just the goat or the goat and the husband, no one could say.

from Dust

November 1, 2013 Fiction, Issue 06, Issue 06 Fiction

By YVONNE ADHIAMBO OWUOR

Prologue

He leaps over two fire-painted blossoms resting on the stark cracked city pavement. Roused, these unfurl into late-Christmas-season orange-and-black butterflies that flutter into the violet shade of a smog-encrusted roadside jacaranda tree. A thrum becomes a hum becomes thumping footsteps, and soon he is entangled in a thicket of jeers and tossed gray, black, and brown stones as he flees toward a still-distant night. It is said that in combat some soldiers shoot over their enemies’ heads in order to avoid killing them. Some don’t even fire at all. Moses Ebewesit Odidi Oganda’s fingers tremble on the trigger of an old, shiny AK-47. He hurls the gun away with an “Urgh!” The weapon spills across the road—a low-pitched, guttural noise.

Blue Mountains

November 1, 2013 Fiction, Issue 06, Issue 06 Fiction

By JAMIE EDGECOMBE

Dr. Nakajima had a poem in his head. It went something like, however far I go, blue mountains.

‘Ah,’ the Doctor thought, ‘I like the style of Taneda Santka. He is modern, yes, but his poems are easy enough to remember in volume. They are neat and simple and great for these summer days when the mountains grow taller on the horizon with every step. What a joy life is, when someone else puts words around it.’

Flood Control

August 23, 2013 Fiction

This week, as an end-of-summer treat, we present you three stories by The Common contributors originally published in our special Summer Fiction Issue. Enjoy!

Flood Control

By OLIVIA WOLFGANG-SMITH

Here, The Weather Is Lovely

August 21, 2013 Fiction

This week, as an end-of-summer treat, we present you three stories by The Common contributors originally published in our special Summer Fiction Issue. Enjoy!

Here, The Weather Is Lovely

By LAURI ANDERSON ALFORD

The Servant

August 19, 2013 Fiction

This week, as an end-of-summer treat, we present you three stories by The Commoncontributors originally published in our special Summer Fiction Issue. Enjoy!

The Servant

By BIPIN AURORA

Maygold

May 1, 2013 Fiction, Issue 05, Issue 05 Fiction

By VIRGINIA REEVES

The first pest to make itself known in the orchard was the stinkbug, malevolent and focused. It worked at the sap in the fruit, sucking the water from the flesh, leaving behind gnarls and distortions—catfacing, Mona heard it called, though the injured peaches she plucked from her  trees’ branches looked nothing like a cat’s face, but more a woman’s, withered by sun.

Brushfire

May 1, 2013 Fiction, Issue 05, Issue 05 Fiction

By ANNE SWÄRD

One dry, aimless day in an infinitely long summer, a brushfire broke out beside the railway that carved through the landscape. A landscape already scorched by the sun, my landscape, open and gently sloping down toward the lake.

It burned in the field of barley and along the railway embankment, smelled of singed weeds and tar, white-hot rails, blackened barbed wire. Insects and field mice burned. The earth burned. The blackthorn bushes crackled, the turkey sheds smoldered and screeched. Something was changing, a feeling of security melted away; a different mood would take its place.